Ultimately, if you want to create a course that changes lives, it’s your job to anticipate your student’s learning journey. You can’t make people finish your course, but you can find out where they’re getting stuck.

Here are some ways to do that.

How to discover obstacles before your course begins

One of the simplest ways to find out where your students are getting stuck is to use a survey.

For example, in my interview with Halley Gray we talked about how she uses surveys in her course, Be Booked Out, to find out where her students are struggling early on.

using surveys as pre-assessments

Halley uses the built in survey feature in Thinkific (which is great by the way).

She uses a pre-assessment at the beginning of her course to help her get a clear picture of where her students are and what they’re struggling with before they even start.

This helps her to understand her learners better and anticipate their obstacles.

Pro Tip: Ideally, you want to use built-in or embedded surveys/ quizzes to avoid sending your learners out of the course environment. If you don’t have this option, you can link out to a survey--just be aware that distractions may keep students from returning to your course.

Using customer interviews

Another way to discover obstacles is to schedule customer interviews with your audience members before you create it.

If you have a mailing list, email your subscribers to find participants.

If you don’t have a mailing list (or it’s not very engaged) find participants via forums, Facebook groups, or LinkedIn groups.

How to discover obstacles during your course

Let’s be honest--most of us are not self-motivated. We often get distracted. Sometimes we prioritize the new flashy thing over the thing that feels like work.

Your learners are no different.

Even if you plan for obstacles before your course, there will be times when your students will get hung up or just don’t want to do the work.

Sometimes the issue is motivation, sometimes the issue is information, sometimes the issue is life.

You can work around this by creating check-in points during each lesson. For instance, adding a quiz to the beginning or end of your lessons is a great way to check student understanding of the material and keep them engaged.

Pro Tip: Got a Facebook or Slack group? Pay attention to what questions people are asking and where they’re expressing frustration.

How to discover obstacles after your course

So far we’ve talked about how to find obstacles before students take your course and while they’re taking it, but what about after they’re done? Is that a thing?

Why yes, yes it is.

It’s a good idea to create a final assessment (survey) at the end of your course to get feedback and insight into what worked and what didn’t.

Pro Tip: This is also a hack for gauging completion rates if you’re using a platform that doesn’t track that. Aaaaand, you can use final surveys to get testimonials because those bastards can be hard to round up sometimes.

Tips for eliminating learning obstacles

Keep your content simple. We almost always make things more complicated than they have to be. One objective per lesson should do it.

On the other hand, make sure you haven’t left any key information out. If so, add it. (This is why beta testing comes in handy.)

Use examples. Examples necessary to drive home a concept should be in the course. Examples that are supplemental should be in email.

This isn’t common, but if your course is heavy on examples and light on instruction it can leave your students wanting more. If this is part of your student feedback, consider moving your in-course examples to email.

Doing is what distinguishes a course from a book. For transformation to occur, add activities to your course to give your students the opportunity to practice what you’ve preached.

Summary

As a course instructor, it’s your job to find out what might get in the way of student success. You can’t make people do the work, but you can (and should) design with obstacles in mind. This is what separates courses that change lives from those that don't.

You can get started by keeping information simple, adding examples, using surveys and quizzes to check-in, and providing opportunities for application.

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